


Games Spirits Play

by ChipAndDealer



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Except Azula is from the world of Avatar, F/F, Modern Era, Romance, She just kinda gets isekaid into the modern au, Slow Burn, So I cheated, Zuko is an honor student
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25904677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChipAndDealer/pseuds/ChipAndDealer
Summary: "Are you coming?" Zuko asked, impatiently, holding open the door of a black vehicle. Azula's first guess was palanquin, but judging by the wheels and shape, it was more likely to be a tank analogy. She climbed in, watching him all the while. "Why are you so weird, today?" He asked, getting in, himself. "Don't tell me you're nervous."Considering the next time she expected to see him was her execution, 'nervous' seemed an understatement. Still, "you know me, Zuzu." She smirked. "I don't get nervous." Appearances had to be maintained, after all. Even in... wherever this was.
Relationships: Azula/Katara (Avatar)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 216





	1. Chapter 1

It was a strange thing for Azula to wake without pain. As a child, her muscles would ache as she pushed herself further and further in her training. Her hands would burn with every form she failed trying to get it perfect, always more perfect. When she hunted Zuko and the Avatar, she'd get blisters from riding the mongoose lizards, or bruises from deflecting their pitiful attacks. When she lost the Agni Kai, when Zuko froze her in a tiny box to die away from prying eyes, she'd wake with teeth chattering so hard she feared they'd chip away. Always with pain, she'd wake.

Agony was an old friend, but comfort, warmth, waking without any protest from her body, it was all a stranger to her. When Mai and Ty Lee would admit jealousy of her servants or clothes, the softness of her bed, they'd always say how nice it must be to be part of the royal family, and she would smirk and hold it over them like it was some kind of prize destiny had given her, all while the words tasted like ash on her tongue. "Only the best for the Fire Princess."

She wondered, sometimes, if it sounded as fake to Mai and Ty Lee as it did to her.

In recent times, however, the thought of the two traitors who called themselves her friends, sent a new pain through her she could feel despite the suffocating cold. Did they know where she was? The thought would jab at her mind as she tried to fall asleep. Had they truly left her there to rot, without so much as a visit? The answer she'd always come up with was yes.

Only the best for the Fire Princess.

So she'd lay down to sleep once more, thoughts of Mai and Ty Lee drowned with more of Zuko, the Avatar, the earthbender, the swordsman, that waterbender, and the hatred that she felt at each and every one of them would burn within her, making the cold bearable for just one more night. Then she'd wake the next morning in the cold, in pain.

But not this morning.

This morning, her thin blankets had been replaced by a luxurious, monstrously big, comforter, her rough prison cot swapped with a softness she couldn't remember in even her finest fire palace mattress, and the frigid chill was now a gentle warmth. The strangest part of all, was that even twitching her fingers, shifting her legs, breathing through her nose, she couldn't feel the slightest bit of pain. For as long as she could remember, she'd never woken without pain.

Azula kept her eyes shut. She knew what was real and what was fake. She never saw things that weren't there, never heard them, never felt them. She was perfectly sane. She was perfect. She had to be.

This, all the blankets, the bed, the warmth, would all disappear soon enough, and she'd be back with the pain. It was better to wait it out, not engage or hope. She knew better than to play games with spirits.

She heard knocking, but made no response. "Azula?" Zuko's voice, she knew it wasn't him. "Are you still not up yet? We're gonna be late."

She squeezed her eyes shut tighter.

She was sane. She was sane. She was sane.

"If you're not downstairs in five minutes, I'm calling dad," the Zuko imitation pronounced, muffled footsteps signalling his departure.

Azula gritted her teeth. Even if it wasn't real, the thought of displeasing her father made her stomach squirm. Could she really stay still, when after minutes in the warmth and soft, the pain hadn't come?

Maybe, she considered, there were worse madnesses to be trapped in. One eye opened, then the next. Her icy prison was gone, and in its place was something strange.

It was a room, about the size of hers in the palace, but rather than the sight of wood and stone or the insignia of the fire nation on her blankets, on the wall, the ceiling above her and the walls to the side seemed flat, seamless. Instead of browns and greys, it was decorated in burnt orange, with accents in red. The unnaturalness of it all only furthered her suspicion that spirits were involved.

The clothes she found were similar. Strange design, strange material, the colors were thankfully her own, but there wasn't a single shred of armor between them. She wished she could believe that meant there was no one to fight, but she wasn't so naive.

A side room, where the plumbing was kept, it seemed, held a mirror she used to peek at her face for the first time. Her hair was mussy, down and slightly tangled from sleep, but she could tell with only a glance how perfect it was, like before the Agni Kai. She reached up and felt a strand, relishing the feeling. In her prison, the cold would freeze the hair, dry it, ruin it, even if she hadn't done that herself. It was foolish and impractical, but she'd always liked her hair.

Another call from Zuko snapped her from her reflection, and she quickly chose an outfit that didn't look dreadful and put it on, combing and pinning her hair so not a strand was out of place. Her face was older, she considered, but definitely hers. There were no mirrors in her cell, so she hadn't seen herself in ages.

Her eyes strayed to the mirror once again. "Is that what I look like?" But no, there was no sallowness to the cheeks, no bags to the eyes, no blue tinge to her frozen lips. This face was perfect.

She turned away.

Zuko was there when she answered the door, also unarmored, and lacking the Firelord's crown as well. Interesting. "What took you so long? You're usually up earlier than me."

Without any real information to place her, Azula resorted to an old standby: taunting Zuko. "Aw, Zuzu," she cooed, patronizingly. "Were you worried about me?"

He huffed, angering as quickly as he always did. "Stop messing around. I won't have you screw up my perfect attendance because you felt like sleeping in on your first day."

"Then by all means, Zuzu," she waved an arm. "Lead the way."

While her room at least held some similar style to the Fire Palace, the rest of the house it seemed did not follow suit. For the most part, it was white, as boring and plain a color as she could think of, really. Wearing that awful Kyoshi makeup made her want to gag. There were some reds in accents, some blacks in marble tiles on the first floor, but most of it was annoyingly white.

Zuko led outside, and feeling the sun on her face once again felt better than she ever could have imagined. Waking in the warmth was nice, but basking in the sun felt like her veins were finally reignited after all this time.

"Are you coming?" He asked, impatiently, holding open the door of a black vehicle. Azula's first guess was palanquin, but judging by the wheels and shape, it was more likely to be a tank analogy. She climbed in, watching Zuko all the while. "Why are you so weird, today?" He asked, getting in, himself. "Don't tell me you're nervous."

Considering the next time she expected to see him was her execution, 'nervous' seemed an understatement. Still, "you know me, Zuzu." She smirked. "I don't get nervous." Appearances had to be maintained, after all. Even in... wherever this was.

Zuko huffed and turned away, leaving them in silence for the few minutes until the almost-tank slowed to a stop. He departed, so she did the same.

It was different, everything here was, but after years in the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, Azula could recognize a school anywhere. Her lips curled into distaste. Of course the spirits would send her here.

Zuko said something about going to class and for her to follow the signs, before running off. Azula had gotten used to ignoring him by then.

Walking in the sun was truly magnificent. While there were no physical effects of her long isolation to mar her body, the balm of heat and air soothed her mind quite nicely. She left questions of her soul's condition alone.

"Should've figured you'd be out here," the dull tone that could only have been Mai's voice pricked her ears. Turning to see her without her usual robes or knives was more a confirmation than anything.

The fact that, like Zuko, her expression harbored no ill will, or any indication of her betrayal at all did little to quash the bile that rose in Azula's throat when she saw her again, however.

"Where else would I be?" She asked, forcing her own voice to level, not willing to give anything away unnecessarily.

Mai rolled her eyes, softly. "Maybe where any number of signs pointed toward 'Orientation' told you to go?"

"Maybe..." Azula hummed. As much as she enjoyed being outside her cell, bending to the whims of even phantoms of her brother and former friends was growing boring. Her eyes sharpened on Mai. "Say, do you remember the last time we saw each other? When was it?"

Mai crooked an eyebrow. "The beach? Two weeks ago?"

Azula took a step closer, but Mai didn't flinch. "It wasn't... the Boiling Rock?"

Her face didn't flash with anger, or fear, or even defiance; it was confusion. "The what?"

"What do you think of the Avatar?" She asked next, but still Mai's features betrayed nothing.

"Sozin's Comet?" Nothing.

"The Fire Lord?" Nothing.

"The Fire Nation?" When still her features spoke nothing but confusion even of her home, Azula ended the questioning.

"Are you okay?" Mai asked, eyeing her up and down like she'd see a large bump where she'd hit her head.

This was more than a delusion, more than games spirits played; this was real. Which meant no failure to her father, no betrayal of her friends, and no icy prison ready to swallow her whole. No matter how it came about, she was free, from everything.

A dark chuckle wracked her being. "Never better, Mai," she answered with a genuine smile, even if it was tinged slightly by malice. With confident strides, she walked past her, toward where a sign directed her to Orientation. "I'm just perfect."

<><><>

It was amazing how weak the world was. No vast empire, no army flooding the streets. The system of guards they had were stretched thin, allocated poorly, and the system of leadership was mired in endless bureaucracy half its members blatantly ignored.

Azula couldn't have imagined a more perfect place to form a new Fire Nation, and that wasn't even the best part.

Because no matter how much she'd searched in the library, or the virtually endless database linked to it, courtesy of an advanced technology this world had developed, Azula couldn't find any references to Bending. At first, she thought it could have been a mistake, that they simply had a different name for it, but no.

For whatever reason, these people had never discovered Bending.

No Avatar.

No annoying waterbenders.

No defense.

Her fingers sparked with impatient flame, but she breathed deeper, drawing it in. It wouldn't do to give the game away so soon.

"Excuse me? Are you done with that computer?" A voice interrupted her, and Azula blinked, realizing she'd let the screen go dark as she became lost in her thoughts. "It's just, I really need to print this out. I'll be quick, I promise."

Azula's eyes narrowed as she turned. She knew that voice. The all-too familiar blue eyes of the Water Tribe girl met hers.

It took a force of will bred from countless training sessions for her not to reach out and break her on instinct. It would have been so easy, too, but no. Murdering a student in a public library so early on was bound to attract too much attention, too soon. If she used firebending, she might as well call her plans over and done with. Besides, putting her personal vendetta aside, without bending, she was just a child: no threat whatsoever.

She wheeled her chair back, gesturing at the computer with a false smile. "Go right ahead." When the Water Tribe girl turned her back to start working, Azula's eyes narrowed, considering.

It would be easy to discount her, but wasn't that the same mistake she'd made before? She'd underestimated her, her brother, the Avatar, Zuko, everyone, and paid for it with ice and pain.

Even with barely any bending to her name, she managed to evade Zuko, not that that was particularly hard, but he also had a full complement of Fire Nation soldiers with him, and her Uncle.

Iroh...

He was a traitor to the Fire Nation long before, but Zuko changed sides to help the Avatar along the way, or was there more to it? The way he'd thrown himself in front of her lightning to protect the Water Tribe girl definitely spoke of something.

Wasn't she also the only one known to force the Avatar into the Avatar state?

The Avatar, Zuko, even her Water Tribe bendless brother probably went wherever she did, it was amazing just how much of a lynchpin she was for all of her enemies.

Azula's thoughtful frown morphed into a crafty smile. Killing her would only force the Avatar to follow someone else, but if the Avatar and all those others followed this simple Water Tribe girl... what if the Water Tribe girl followed her? Besides, Azula's eyes trailed up and down the girl's slender frame, killing her would be such a waste.

"All done," she pulled away from the computer, fetching a small stack of papers from the printer. "Thanks."

"Of course," the Fire Princess stood, extending a hand, her smile practically cheshire in nature. "Azula."

"Oh, that's a pretty name." She took the hand, smiling affably. "Katara."

Azula nodded, tucking the name away internally. As an enemy, names were largely inconsequential, but as a project, well... "A bit early to be working on assignments, isn't it?" She gestured to the papers in Katara's hands. "Are you a returning student?"

"Oh, no, my brother is," she explained. "This is one of his Summer projects he didn't get printed in time. This is actually my first year, here."

"Mine as well," Azula began moving past, dipping her head so her voice would tickle the girl's ear as she passed. "I hope we can get to know each other better," she whispered, lowly. Without waiting for a response, Azula walked away.

Love, dating, genuine connections like that were something she didn't have any experience with. Trying to be 'herself' when she went to Ember Island with her brother and the girls was a complete bungle, but this? Manipulation? Deceit? She was born to do this.

She walked outside, feeling her energy rise in the sunlight, so glorious against her skin.

She always stole her brother's toys as children, why should his girl be any different?

Katara wouldn't know what hit her.

<><><>

Katara had heard stories, of course, about wild college parties, casual relationships, and more activities of a mature level, but she hadn't expected it to blindside her quite this much.

She definitely hadn't expected it to happen on her first day.

Sokka took the papers from her numb grasp, paging through them for a moment before waving a hand in front of her face. "Katara? You alright? Professor Shi-Tong didn't give you any trouble in the library, did he?"

Katara sat, harshly, on Sokka's bed, the springs bouncing for a moment before settling. "So, I'm pretty sure I just got hit on," she managed to work the words through her daze after a few minutes.

"What?" Sokka cried, scandalized. "Who was it? It was Jet, wasn't it? That slimy piece of-"

"It wasn't Jet," she cut him off, "it was Azula."

"Azula?" His eyebrows furrowed. "That's not a very masculine name. Is he a freshman?"

"She..." Katara hesitated, "is a freshman."

"She?" He asked, confused, before his eyes widened. "Oh." He scratched the back of his neck, uncomfortably. "Are you sure she was-"

"More than a little sure, yeah," Katara confirmed, unable to help the urge to touch her ear where the feeling of Azula's breath still lingered. How was it so warm?

Sokka shrugged, leaning against a dresser. "You gonna go for it?"

"No," she shouted, it was her turn to be scandalized. "Can you imagine what dad would say?" Her tone became a mocking falsetto as she clasped her hands together, "'hey, dad, just checking in. I know I've only been at college one day, but meet my super hot girlfriend, Azula. She picked me up at the library and I know nothing about her, but don't worry. She's just here to make sure you never have grandkids.'" She slumped back onto the bed, groaning.

Sokka nodded, a pensive expression on his face for a moment. "So she's super hot?"

A pillow slammed into his chest. "That's what you got from that?" She shouted.

"What?" He protested, holding his arms up to defend against further pillow attacks. "It's important to clarify. Besides, if you're not gonna do anything about it, maybe I have a shot."

"You can have her," Katara heaved a sigh, moving the pillow under her head and slumping down on it once again. "I wasn't even planning on dating anyone until junior year, and that's gonna be a boy," she asserted.

Sokka shrugged in an, 'if you say so,' manner she didn't appreciate. "Still, you've been on campus for, what? An hour and a half? That's gotta be a record."

Katara rolled her eyes, deliberately changing the subject. "And what about you? Sophomore year and still no girlfriend, huh?"

"I'm working on it," he said, voice a little heated. "I'll have you know, I had a very passionate relationship with the Dairy Queen girl last Summer."

Katara sat up. "The one you kissed once and had to move away?"

Sokka threw his hands up. "Don't say it like that. She didn't move away because I kissed her." He matched Katara's skeptical glance with a glare. "Besides, I didn't say it was a long relationship, just very passionate."

Katara rolled her eyes just as the door to the dorm room clicked open once again. A stocky, tanned boy walked in, lugging a duffel bag behind him while an older man, evidently his father, deposited a mini fridge into the dorm room.

"Hey, Haru," Sokka greeted, grabbing the boy's hand and bumping their chests together. Katara would have called the action a hug if Sokka hadn't objected so strongly the last time she did. "You grew a beard?"

Haru grinned, gesturing to his face and the small but relatively neat beard present there. "What do you think?"

Sokka hummed for a moment. "Very manly," he decided.

Katara decided this was a good moment to slip away, before the testosterone drowned her completely. Exiting into the hallway, however, she immediately slammed into another girl, causing both of them to fall on the floor.

"Oh, I'm so sorry about that-" she started to say, before the girl harshly interrupted her.

"Hey, why don't you watch where you're going?" The angry girl snapped, her eyes squinted shut as she rubbed the part of her head that knocked into Katara's.

"Why don't you?" She shot back, annoyed at being interrupted when she was actively apologizing. "The door was open, couldn't you see me-" The girl opened her eyes and Katara's words froze on her tongue. "Ah."

She was blind.

"Yeah, 'ah,'" the blind girl jeered, standing up and retrieving the cane that had fallen to the floor. "Watch where you're going next time, clumsy." She shoved her shoulder against her as she passed, forcing the stunned Katara against the wall.

"Making all kinds of friends today, aren't you, Katara?" She whispered to herself.

"Who's Katara?" A voice asked, inches from her face.

"Gah," she tripped backwards, falling to the ground for the second time in as many minutes. After cursing gravity for a moment, her eyes blinked up to the extended hand of a pale girl dressed in, wow, not very much clothing. This was move-in day for freshman, too, there were a bunch of parents around. That took a lot of self confidence. She took the hand and the girl helped her to her feet. "Thanks, and I'm Katara, by the way, I was just talking to myself."

"Cool," she answered, enthusiastically. "I'm Ty Lee." She quirked her head at the door. "Have you moved in already?"

"Not yet. This is my brother's room, actually, I'm supposed to be up in 206," she explained, glad for the moment to be engaged in something like a normal conversation.

"No way," Ty Lee gushed. "I'm supposed to be in 206, too. Roommates." She dove forward into a hug, almost making Katara fall again, before she regained her footing. She hopped away a moment after, grinning ear to ear. "I'm just going to meet some friends of mine, do you want to come along?"

Katara blinked, surprised. "But, you don't even know anything about me. Why invite me when we only met, like, thirty seconds ago?" There were an embarrassing number of times Katara had been burned like this, invitations too good to be true from the popular kids. Looking Ty Lee up and down, she definitely seemed like popular kid material, so she found herself distinctly on guard.

"Your aura's the most vibrant shade of blue," she explained, like it made perfect sense. "That means you're responsible and intuitive, even if you have the tendency to be critical and moody." She shrugged, happily. "So, you see. I do know something about you. Why shouldn't we be friends?"

As much as she might have liked to deny it, or pick apart some of Ty Lee's frankly ludicrous logic, her enthusiasm was just a bit too much to resist, and Katara found herself pulled through the halls in short order by the mile a minute conversationalist.

"-and Mai said she's been acting a little weird lately, so I said, 'weird how,' and Mai said, 'outside the norm,' but she said it in that way that, like, she knows she's being difficult about it so she's super smug, so I said, 'is she nervous?' Because it's her first day of college, I mean it's all of our first days, and I know I'm super nervous, but there's no real reason to be nervous because I've already made a new friend, but Mai said, 'Azula doesn't get nervous,' and I said, 'well, yeah, but if she got nervous wouldn't that be 'outside the norm,' like I threw her own words back at her, but Mai said-" Katara interrupted this latter half of Ty Lee's brief history of what appeared to be this afternoon, as one of the words caught her attention.

"Wait, Azula?" A sort of creeping dread began invading her system. Setup, setup, setup, the word repeated in her mind like a pounding beat. "You know Azula?"

"Yeah..." Ty Lee's expression of genuine confusion was the only thing stopping Katara from bolting away from the suspicious encounter. "Have you two met?"

"Earlier today." Katara bit her lip, looking away.

"I hope she didn't say anything too mean," Ty Lee said, hesitantly. "She can be a bit... abrasive."

Katara crooked an eyebrow. "Abrasive?" That's hardly what she'd call what happened earlier.

"Yeah," she admitted. "I've been trying to get her to be nicer, but stubborn doesn't even begin to describe Azula. Once she's got it into her head to do something, there's no stopping her."

For Katara, the words felt like ice sliding down her back. "Hoo, boy." She bit her lip. "How often does that apply to... romantic relationships?"

Ty Lee waved a hand. "Oh, I wouldn't know."

"You wouldn't?" Katara asked.

"Yeah," she shrugged. "Azula's never been interested in anyone like that."

Katara nodded, the squirming in her stomach making her feel distinctly unwell. So, unless she'd managed to keep it a complete secret from her best friends, Azula wasn't some smooth-talking playboy. Playgirl? No, instead she'd seen Katara in the library and somehow fell instantly in love.

Brilliant.

That was so, unimaginably, worse.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should change the name of this to 'games upload schedules play' :p
> 
> Happy new year, ya'll.

There was a museum in one of those random Earth Kingdom cities Azula had gone through while chasing the Avatar, that held painted statues formed with earthbending meant to perfectly match a person's body and tone.

It was one of those ideas that could only come from a backwards place like that, but Azula did confess some curiosity while the ship was refueling, and went to visit. If nothing else, then it would prove the superiority of Fire Nation art, she thought.

She paid the man his fee, walked through the door, and stared at Zuko's face until it was time to leave. His hair was dreadful, though it always seemed to be. Even as a child it never felt like his hair matched his face; the addition of a scar down half it only highlighted that. Between the dirt under his fingernails and the grime on his brow, she couldn't blame the craftsman for not recognizing the disgraced prince, even for the length of time it took to make that.

The statue of Zuko seemed to glare at the world, how unfair it was that everything bad seemed to happen to him when so much of it was his fault. Zuko was always in the way, too loud, too honest, too earnest. A pitiful bender and a nuisance, everything that happened to him was his fault.

But when she stared at the painted stone that was his face, she didn't feel any of the righteous anger or sadistic intent that normally followed her interactions with him. Instead there was just a hollowness she couldn't break because despite being in a room filled with statues, her eyes just couldn't look away from this one.

When she'd first saw it, she'd almost destroyed it, fire leaping to her hand faster than a whipcrack, but its utter stillness gave her enough pause to see its true nature before doing so. Honestly, as she reached an involuntary hand up and touched the scar on his face, watching how deep it ran along his face, she wished she had. Because Zuko deserved it, this scar that eclipsed her whole hand, he deserved it all.

But that wasn't what it felt like right then. She wondered, if anyone saw her staring at the lifeless stone, would she be wearing the same expression he was, this anger at the unfairness of the world? Perhaps, for a moment, only a moment.

But then Mai would say the ship was refueled, and Ty Lee would grab her hand and begin tugging her gently away. She'd leave the stone Zuko behind, return to her duty, and if there was some miniscule hesitation in her next meeting with him, well he was a pathetic enough bender it wouldn't really matter, would it?

She should have destroyed the statue when she had a chance. Now, it was like everywhere she turned held some pale imitation of someone she knew. The feeling of looking at Mai and Ty Lee, seeing only the faces of her betrayers, but paradoxically unable to feel any anger at them for it was far too similar to that stone Zuko.

It was... annoying, but it wasn't like she had much time to deal with it. In tactics, in firebending, martial arts, archery, calligraphy, etiquette, poetry, politics, riding, and even the inner workings and details on the war machines she had access to during the war, Azula had the finest tutelage the Fire Nation had to offer, which, being the most advanced nation by far, was quite fine indeed. This made it only more unfortunate that the classes the spirits had assigned her at this strange school featured none of those subjects, and that ones like 'calculus' and 'molecular biology' were firmly out of her wheelhouse.

So, she would need to find a tutor of some kind, to preserve the conceit that she was from this world and therefore had some understanding what was going on. The guidelines on who the tutor had to be were quite clear: the tutor needed to be knowledgeable in the subjects, but lacking in enough credibility that trying to use any information on her ignorance against her would come to nothing, the tutor needed to be willing to teach her as well as willing to comply with her secrecy on the matter, and under no circumstances could the tutor even be tangentially related to the Avatar.

After probing Mai and Ty Lee, as well as accessing the information network she'd been using in the library earlier, a candidate came up that seemed to fill all three criteria. Jeffery Tillman, the former honor student disgraced for a cheating scandal that he only escaped expulsion by some lingering good will among the faculty for his previous efforts in the school. He was a Junior and on the honor roll, so obviously he knew the material, had little credibility anymore, and according to Mai, often discretely accomplished jobs for students willing to pay. There were rumors that even the cheating scandal itself was on someone else's dime, but even getting caught he never admitted a name. More importantly, looking at the face in his student profile and name beside it, she couldn't recognize either even in passing. If he was willing to tutor her, he seemed like a perfect candidate.

So she sent him an email, some instant messenger hawk analogy, it seemed, and focused on a different issue until he replied or wasted too much time to consider. It wasn't like she was lacking in issues to solve; this world the spirits had put her in held no shortage of puddles to dry. Chief among them being, of course, the waterbender girl, Katara.

"Hello, Ty Lee." Azula sat beside her, setting her plate and glass down on the dining hall table before sliding her gaze across it to her prey. "Hey, Katara," she purred, lowly.

Oh, but it was always delightfully amusing to see someone with Water Tribe skin turn that color. It was beginning to become a regular occurence, yet Azula couldn't find herself tiring of it. "Good morning, Azula," Katara answered, a bit stiffly.

Ty Lee looked Azula up and down, analytically, but she already knew the content of her next statement would have nothing to do with the one-sided flirting. "Wow, Azula, your aura is so energetic today. Did something happen?" Either willfully or naturally, Ty Lee seemed intent on being ignorant on the situation between Azula and Katara.

This suited Azula fine, though the waterbender may have had some complaints. "Nothing happened, Ty Lee, Katara is just right, it's been a very," she stretched out the word, "good morning."

Katara choked on her cereal for a moment, grabbing a paper napkin from the dispenser and coughing bits of milk and chewed wheat products into it. Did this count as torture, Azula wondered. It seemed much too fun to.

Really, she was happy at finally discovering a viable tutor that morning, but it wasn't like she could say that, and riling Katara up was one of her favorite morning activities, besides.

"Where's Mai?" Katara asked, once she'd recovered, somewhat. Well, recovered her ability to breathe properly, her decorum was still firmly in the dregs.

Azula waved a hand, vaguely, poking at the eggs the school's servants had prepared that morning. "She had a thing. One of those river things, I wasn't really listening."

Katara and Ty Lee looked at each other, quizzically. "River thing?" Ty Lee echoed.

"Do you mean a stream?" Katara asked eventually.

Azula chewed carefully on some of the eggs. They were disgusting, but that was a situation that could be resolved another day. She needed the fuel now. "If that makes more sense to you, it's probably correct."

Katara shot a questioning glance at Ty Lee, but she only shrugged, waving off what was evidently a strange slip-up. Azula wasn't overly concerned. She could afford to be blasé with those two, it was her teachers, Zuko, and the Avatar when he inevitably reared his head, she needed to be prepared for. Perhaps her tutor could assist her with that as well, though needing to be taught basic computer concepts would probably require more explanation than her ignorance on the precepts of calculus.

She'd chew on the dilemma a while, she decided, Meet Jeffery Tillman, at the very least. In any case, it would probably be tastier than chewing on these eggs. Her plate was discarded with a thin frown as the three of them left the dining hall.

"Not a fan of eggs?" Katara ventured, eyes flicking from the mostly uneaten plate of them she'd just thrown out.

"Actually, turtleduck eggs are some of my favorite." She squeezed her hand into a fist. "But I could cook them in my grip better than these fools do with a full kitchen."

That wasn't hyperbole, either. Cooking eggs with firebending was a known, if not common, method of training firebenders whose flames burned abnormally hot in how to dial it back for more mundane or nonlethal uses. Suffice to say, Zuko never needed this particular exercise.

"Is that a rich person thing?" Katara asked. At Azula's raised eyebrow, she clarified. "Turtleducks, is that like turducken?"

Azula stared at her for a moment before turning away to leave. "If that makes more sense to you," she said, idly, the rest of the statement, as well as any real answer to Katara's question, lost to the wind.

Katara tended to let these things go, usually, but Azula could tell that she was never truly giving up on them. She hadn't realized it before, but the Avatar's companion was sharper than she looked, a piece of jagged flint against the chalk. Trouble.

Thankfully, she already had a plan for that. "Of course," she stopped walking, knowing already that Katara's eyes were glued to her, "if you really want to find out how hot my hands can be, all you need to do is ask." Azula flashed a look behind her, savoring the expression on Katara's face before giving her a smouldering wink and walking forward again.

Red truly was her favorite color. She absolutely adored seeing it on Katara. Maybe, she considered, this was too much fun not to be torture after all.

<><><>

If Katara possessed any amount of self preservation at all, she would have transferred rooms weeks ago. It wasn't like there weren't any other rooms to use. The campus was of a fairly decent size and since a good portion of the students commuted there, the dorms had space to spare. Communicating her situation to her R.A., or some member of the school faculty would likely have seen her in a different room by the end of the month.

But that was just the problem: Katara didn't want to change rooms.

The dorms were constructed of suites with two rooms joined by a bathroom in the center. Two people per room, which made four in a suite, so Katara was with Ty Lee, and one wall over was Mai with, naturally, Azula.

Now, was Katara concerned about these sleeping arrangements? Absolutely. Was she also nervous about kicking up a fuss with the school before even giving the living situation a shot? Also yes. Were Ty Lee and Azula the only girls who had been friendly to her since stepping on campus? That fact also went into consideration.

So Katara decided to give it a shot, and for the first day, the back of her neck felt slick with sweat, and she couldn't think properly or breathe properly because what if something happened with Azula and her own room wasn't safe and what if the two of them were alone and what if...? But she didn't have to know Azula long to figure out those what-ifs were just what-ifs.

Katara wrote down the words, 'turtleduck eggs' in what was quickly becoming her Azula notebook.

Azula was strange, utterly flirtatious, and there were moments Katara saw flashes in her eyes that shone like a lighthouse on the sea that she was dangerous. She didn't want to think about how dangerous, exactly. But there was also an inescapable innocence to Azula, that Katara couldn't help but be put at ease by.

It was like the only thing Azula knew on the subject was from a PG-13 movie. The words, the movements were all perfect; too perfect, really, Katara thought as her stomach squirmed uncomfortably. But when it came to anything truly physical, it was like Azula had no idea what to do. Though, given what Ty Lee said on the subject, Azula had never had any relationships before, so that could very well be true.

The point was, Azula wouldn't be the one to take anything beyond just words, and since Katara certainly wasn't going to move the relationship forward, she figured after a few weeks getting nowhere, Azula would take the hint and move on. Katara didn't have loads of experience in relationships, but she could totally deal with Azula's flirting until that happened. She'd just have to ignore it. Easy.

In any case, all of that was besides the main point, and the reason she had an 'Azula notebook' in the first place: that being the very serious and present possibility that Azula was an alien from another planet.

Now, Sokka laughed when he heard her theory, but she wasn't just spitballing, here, she had some real evidence. An entire notebook of it, in fact, or half of one, at least.

There were things Azula just didn't understand about the world. Really basic things, like automatic doors, or basically any acronym. She didn't know any slang, had never seen any movies or TV shows, and the colloquialisms she used were warped like they came from a different culture entirely.

This might have been explained away, except for the fact she was filthy rich and grew up only a few blocks from the school. She could have just had a sheltered upbringing if her best friends weren't a livestreamer and a sports star, or if her social media accounts didn't hold a great deal of photographic evidence showing her going out and being in the world.

Seeing the Azula online, in the pictures and videos her and her two friends had posted, it was only too obvious to Katara that the Azula of before and the Azula of now were different people. Seeing her, smiling with friends, drinking at a bar while underage, there was something in her eyes that had fundamentally changed. The danger in them was gone, but the innocence was, too.

So that Azula had to have been abducted and replaced by the current Azula sometime between the Wednesday before school started, and the day Katara had first met her on Monday. It seemed like that was the last time she had posted anything online.

Here came the conundrum: she had a theory, she had evidence, she had a timeline, but she had no idea what to do with any of it. In all the TV shows, books, and movies she'd read with a similar premise, the characters who had discovered someone's alien origins either confronted them directly right then, or waited until they were in the midst of some extraterrestrial peril and confronted them then.

Then the character would either become a sidekick in the alien's usually harrowing, trauma-inducing adventures, get their memory wiped by an alien or government device to preserve the secret, or die. Of those, the sidekick option was the best, but beyond wanting to avoid the PTSD that came with it, those sidekicks usually ended up falling in love with the alien, which...

Katara crossed out the last line in the notebook.

That route is suboptimal, she wrote, instead.

It was strange, knowing this, feeling that something was wrong with Azula, twisted out of shape, foreign, but not even having the first idea what to do about it.

She needed backup. Katara underlined the word, for emphasis. Sokka was less than sympathetic about her alien plight, and Ty Lee was too close to the situation. She had to find a student who wanted to be friends outside of that circle so she could talk about the whole thing and figure out what to do next.

The only question was who?

Katara's eyes scanned across the quad, looking for any students that seemed likely. A few students playing with a frisbee, probably not, a guy doing yoga on the grass... there goes his shirt, Katara knocked him off the list, Toph Beifong, the blind girl Katara had run into earlier, maybe she-oh, she just got hit with the frisbee, and now she's tearing the frisbee players a new one, yeah definitely not her, either.

Then who?

Students studying, mingling, eating, teachers walking to and from classes, fraternities recruiting, someone playing with a drone, someone napping in the sun, who among them could Katara trust? Who would believe her about Azula? Who wouldn't laugh?

She tightened the grip on the pencil in her hand, looking again. There had to be a better way to do this. Advertising on social media, putting a poster on the bulletin board, joining a club, anything had to be better than this. But there was a feeling when she looked across the quad, a warmth like there was someone in and amongst them she was already friends with and just didn't know it yet. She couldn't explain it, but it was there.

Napping student, no. Drone student, no. Eating student, studying student, laughing student, no, no, no. Fraternity recruiters-why were they even recruiting, anyway? Weren't they supposed to wait until rush w-

Katara stopped. Her pencil slipped out of her hand, landing on the ground, forgotten. There, passing out flyers for the frat, was a boy in loose jeans and a varsity sports jacket, a baseball cap pulled low over his head, and a feeling Katara couldn't ignore. This one. She knew this one.

She stood up and marched right up to him with a confidence she'd never known before, tapping the boy on the shoulder and sticking her hand out to introduce herself. "Excuse me, my name is Katara. I was wondering if... you... huh."

"Nice to meet you, Katara," the 'boy' answered with a smile bordering on sardonic, but genuine nonetheless, shaking her hand. "You interested in the sorority?"

"Oh." Katara backed away a step, suddenly at a loss. "I... don't know."

The girl, and there was no denying that fact this close, reached forward and gave a reassuring pat on her shoulder before handing over a flyer. "Hey, it's all good. You're a freshman, right? Did you have a question?"

"I just wanted to be friends?" Wow, that sounded infinitely lamer when she said it out loud.

She looked surprised for a moment, but smiled again. "I like your spunk, girl. Sure." She gave a lazy two-fingered salute. "Name's Suki."

Suki. Katara managed a tentative smile. "Nice to meet you."

'Again,' her brain supplied, but Katara ignored it. This was the first time they were meeting.

Right?

<><><>

The instructions in Jeffery Tillman's email, while explanatory, weren't exactly easy to follow, particularly for someone who only barely knew the campus like Azula did. By the time she'd finally reached the end, it felt like she'd been up and down every building in the area, finally entering into the bottom floor of one of the parking garages and through a door marked 'employees only'.

She wasn't, but it wasn't exactly Fire Nation law that extended to a place like this, so she simply ignored the sign.

The smell that seemed to drill into her nose when she entered was all too familiar by that point. She may have been raised in the spiced air of the Fire Palace and the searing sweat of the training arenas, but her clearest memories were still of the war. The burn of coal on a ship, of oil on a tank, the thrum of the engine on the air that seemed to have a scent all its own, this place had it all.

It was disgusting, full of grime and dirt, a thick layer of heated smog that seemed to cling to the ceiling, nearly blocking out the few lights still working, but Azula couldn't help a slight ease to her steps that being in so familiar a setting caused her.

More of those tank analogies from before were positioned around the apparent workshop in various states of disrepair. None of them were shaped quite like the one she had ridden in, these were shorter, taller, different colors, different shapes, different uses, yet all of them were undeniably the same.

"You get lost, princess?" A young girl jeered, sliding out from under one of the near-tanks. There was black sludge on her face, some ejection from the vehicle no doubt, but in the dim light it made it all the more difficult to see her.

Azula raised an imperious eyebrow, regarding the child. "That depends. Is Jeffery Tillman here?"

Her expression darkened. "Who wants to know?"

"Easy, sparkplug," another voice came from the dark. Finally stepping out of it was the undeniable face of Jefferey Tillman, wiping his face with a cloth and tipping a pair of safety goggles up onto his head to keep a mess of unruly black hair out of his eyes. "Azula, I presume?"

"Tillman," she answered, coolly.

He gestured behind him and the two walked to a pair of soft chairs, obviously stolen from a dorm common room somewhere. "I must say, your request for tutoring surprised me. It wasn't hard to find info on you online and it's not every day a valedictorian in their first year of college wants me to teach them basic algebra and the like." He shrugged. "So what's the deal? Worried you won't be able to cheat your way through here? Cause, let me tell you, it's not that hard."

Azula's eyes slid to the girl he'd called 'sparkplug,' for a moment, then back to him. "Are you able to guarantee discretion on this subject? Both of you?"

"You can relax, princess," Jefferey assured her. "Even if we wanted to, we've got no one to tell. Your secret's safe with us."

Azula nodded, not quite believing them, but assured in her own research at their lack of credibility if they tried to tell others. "My situation is complicated, but suffice it to say, I have recently suffered a form of... amnesia, I'd like to be kept secret from several parties. That is why I'm coming to you."

"You're joking," Jefferey said, deadpan. At Azula's flat expression, he scratched his head, breathing a low whistle. "You're not joking."

"I'm not," she confirmed. "As a result, there are a few subjects likely in the 'common knowledge' category I'll also need guidance on."

He sighed, considering for a few moments. "And if I say no?"

"You're easily replaceable," Azula said simply. "Surely you know that by now."

The little sparkplug girl looked like she was just about to interject, but Jeffery only laughed. "You're really something, you know that?" He shook his head, standing. "I'll do it, but I have three conditions."

Azula stood as well, neither accepting nor denying them straight away, so he continued.

"The first condition is payment. I don't know what you've heard about my regular rates, but for you it's gonna be triple." He smirked. "I trust that won't be a problem?"

"Don't insult me," she shot back, matching him smirk for smirk. "Money is no issue."

"The second condition is I'm gonna need a little more info than 'some form of amnesia,' to go on, or I'll have no idea what you need to know." She grimaced at the words.

"That's... reasonable," she ground out. "But if that's the case, I have a condition of my own."

Jeffery spread his hands, agreeably. "Name it."

"These." She gestured to the vehicles scattered around the space. "You'll teach me about these, also."

He looked at her curiously for a few seconds. "You mean like the insides, too? Isn't auto-repair a bit dirty for you?"

"Is that a no?" Azula asked back, challengingly.

"No, that's doable," he agreed, then added. "But if you break anything, that's going on your dime, too."

The eyeroll she gave at that was enough to physically force the sparkplug girl back a step.

"So, we have a deal, then?" He extended his arm to shake, but Azula didn't move.

"You said there were three conditions, but you've only outlined two," she pointed out. "Did you really think I wouldn't notice, Tillman?"

He laughed again, scratching the back of his head. "Oh, I'm not trying to pull one over on you or anything, the third one's just about my name. No calling me Jeffery, and no calling me Tillman, alright? It may be what's on my ID, but nobody calls me that."

"Alright," Azula allowed. "Then what should I call you?"

He extended the hand again, grinning. "Call me Jet."


End file.
